Laird Wilcox

Laird Maurice Wilcox is an American researcher specializing in the study of political fringe movements. He is the founder of the "Wilcox Collection of Contemporary Political Movements,"[1] said to be one of the largest collections of American political material in the United States. It is housed in the Kenneth Spencer Research Library at the University of Kansas.[2] Wilcox worked as carpenter, investigator and writer while living in Olathe, Kansas.[3]

Contents

The Wilcox Collection of Contemporary Political Movements, housed in the Kansas Collection of Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas, includes coverage of "more than 10,000 individuals and organizations. The bulk of the collection covers 1960 to the present and comprises nearly 10,000 books, pamphlets and periodicals, 800 audio tapes, 73 feet (22 m) of manuscript materials and more than 100,000 pieces of ephemera including flyers, brochures, mailings, clippings and bumper stickers." Wilcox continues to make regular donations.[5]

The collection began in 1963-1964 when Wilcox, then a student at the University of Kansas, kept a scrapbook while he was chair of the Student Union Association Minority Opinions Forum. According to the Kenneth Spencer Research Library website, the forum was very active that year, with speakers invited to discuss civil liberties, freedom of expression, apartheid, communism, the American Nazi Party, and the Socialist Labor Party. In 1965, the university purchased a number of books, serials, and pamphlets from Wilcox, and the Wilcox Collection began.[2]

In 1989 Wilcox received the "Kansas City Area Archivists Award of Excellence" in 1989 for his role in founding and maintaining the Wilcox Collection.[6] In 1993 he was awarded the Myers Center Award for the Study of Human Rights in the United States. In 1994 he was awarded the Freedom of Information Award of the Kansas Library Association/SIRS "For outstanding commitment to intellectual freedom." In 1995 he received the Mencken Award of the Free Press Association "For outstanding journalism in defense of liberty."[citation needed] In 2005 the University of Kansas honored Wilcox, then 63, in the Spencer library's North Gallery for his role in founding the collection.[3] He has been a member of the American Civil Liberties Union since 1961 and a member of Amnesty International since 1970.[citation needed]

In his 1997 self-published book The Watchdogs[7] Wilcox criticized an "industry" of such groups "whose identity and livelihood depend upon growth and expansion of their particular kind of victimization." He holds such groups use "links and ties" to imply connections between individuals and groups. And they collect millions of dollars by greatly exaggerating the size and danger of such groups, becoming "a massive extortion racket." He names groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Anti-Defamation League, Political Research Associates and the Center for Democratic Renewal. Mark Potok of Southern Poverty Law Center told a reporter that Wilcox "had an ax to grind for a great many years," and engaged in name calling against others doing anti-racist work. Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates told a reporter that "Laird Wilcox is not an accurate or ethical reporter...He simply can't tolerate people who are his competition in this field."[8]

Be Reasonable: Selected Quotations for Inquiring Minds, by Laird Wilcox and John George, 1995. It is a large collection of quotations on twenty topics, including civil liberties, Freedom of Speech and of Press, Ideologies and Ideologues, Propaganda, and Public Opinion and Mass Media. "This is a unique reference work consisting of provocative quotations meant to challenge tendencies toward censorship an supression of ideas as well as the stifling effects of 'politically correct' behavior."[10]

Wilcox, Laird. "What Is Political Extremism?," Free Inquiry, Council for Democratic and Secular Humanism. Fall 1990, Vol. 10, No. 4., pp. 13–16. A more recent (2005?) and shortened version of this essay appears here